Those fakes charts from GISS are fake. They are smoothing temperatures from 1200 kms away in Siberia to the pack ice. Those temperatures in Siberia have something like a 0.20 correlation coefficient to the actual temperatures in the Arctic.

The real temperatures on the ground are measured by the sea ice bouys and they do not have any unusual temperatures this summer or last.

For example, here is 2011D which is in the central Arctic basin and has survived two full melt seasons so far so has a two year long temperature record.

Because of this, it's difficult to say whether global warming was a factor in this latest event. Given the decades-old ice-core evidence, "you could make the case that it's not unexpected to see it now," the University of Georgia's Mote said.

Making it even harder to pin down a cause, the big thaw coincided with the formation of a high-pressure ridge over Greenland, which pulled in warm air from over the central Atlantic Ocean.

"So you had this warm pool of air just sitting literally over the top of the ice sheet," Mote said. "It's similar in character, but not in magnitude or duration, to what we're seeing over the Great Plains that's associated with the drought" in the United States.

Such widespread melts would make it harder for the so-called firn—compacted snow on the outside of an ice sheet—to reabsorb the melted ice water.

"If you get some melt at the surface and you have a thick firn layer, then it can refreeze, and the refrozen water turns into ice again," Robinson explained.

"But if you have repeated melting and refreezing of the ice sheet, what ends up happening in the long term is you reduce the thickness of the firn layer, and that reduces the capacity of the ice sheet to refreeze."

Scientists estimate that if all of Greenland's ice sheet were to melt, the global sea level would rise by 23 feet (7 meters).

"To be perfectly clear, that is not what we're seeing," Mote said. "Greenland is losing mass, but it would take a very long time to lose all of that mass."

_________________________We have about five more years at the outside to do something.Kenneth Watt, ecologist - Earth Day, 197043 years later...we're still here.

Those fakes charts from GISS are fake. They are smoothing temperatures from 1200 kms away in Siberia to the pack ice. Those temperatures in Siberia have something like a 0.20 correlation coefficient to the actual temperatures in the Arctic.

The real temperatures on the ground are measured by the sea ice bouys and they do not have any unusual temperatures this summer or last.

For example, here is 2011D which is in the central Arctic basin and has survived two full melt seasons so far so has a two year long temperature record.

The radical decline in sea ice around the Arctic is at least 70% due to human-induced climate change, according to a new study, and may even be up to 95% down to humans – rather higher than scientists had previously thought.

The loss of ice around the Arctic has adverse effects on wildlife and also opens up new northern sea routes and opportunities to drill for oil and gas under the newly accessible sea bed.

The reduction has been accelerating since the 1990s and many scientists believe the Arctic may become ice-free in the summers later this century, possibly as early as the late 2020s.

"Since the 1970s, there's been a 40% decrease in the summer sea ice extent," said Jonny Day, a climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, who led the latest study.

"We were trying to determine how much of this was due to natural variability and therefore imply what aspect is due to man-made climate change as well."

To test the ideas, Day carried out several computer-based simulations of how the climate around the Arctic might have fluctuated since 1979 without the input of greenhouse gases from human activity.

He found that a climate system called the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) was a dominant source of variability in ice extent. The AMO is a cycle of warming and cooling in the North Atlantic that repeats every 65 to 80 years – it has been in a warming phase since the mid-1970s.

Comparing the models with actual observations, Day was able to work out what contribution the natural systems had made to what researchers have observed from satellite data.

"We could only attribute as much as 30% [of the Arctic ice loss] to the AMO," he said. "Which implies that the rest is due to something else, and this is most likely going to be man-made global change."

Not too long ago there was another paper by Notz and Marotzke about the Arctic sea ice loss and the role of AGW. They focussed mainly on the influence of the PDO and AO.

This possible connection between AGW/CO2 and Arctic sea ice loss reminds me a bit of the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It's pretty obvious from the data that one causes the other, but how to prove it? Well, we have more and more data coming in, and it seems more and more researchers are taking up the challenge to prove the connection.

We have a canary, we see it asphyxiating, we have a very strong suspicion it has to do with the coal mine. How long until we can be sure?

Dr Everhuis, a Dutch scientist, here reviews evidence which suggests that instead of cooling-off, the earth is growing warmer. One result of this is to change the climates of several countries, with potential benefit to some and disaster to others.

SCIENTISTS are gathering more and more proofs that a climatological revolution is going on around our globe. Very slowly but surely the earth is getting warmer.

Until recently the scientific world has kept quiet about this, but now the phenomenon has even penetrated to the political field.

Talking of Greenland, the largest island in the world, the Prime Minister of Denmark stated:

"During the past generation changes have taken place which will have a decisive influence on the entire social life. The climate is changing, and with that the economic outlook. This change has already been observed in several parts of the world ..."

The changes in Greenland have been very noticeable. About six centuries ago, at the time of a change for the worse often referred to as the "small ice-period," man and beast had to withdraw from the advancing masses of ice. Even the Eskimos had to give in when at the beginning of the 19th century - the height of the cold period - Greenland became practically uninhabitable.

During the present century, however, this largest island of the world has become milder. Glaciers have retreated and the landscape has changed completely.

For the first time for centuries some agriculture is possible while more and more species of fish are being caught. Following the warmer streams the cod has made its appearance off Greenland's shores and has become part of the island diet.

During the past 27 years this fish has advanced about nine degrees to the north. Herrings also are moving northward, while Greenland now knows many birds which hitherto remained far to the south.

These changes are of the greatest strategical importance. Norway's most northern harbour of Spitzbergen, where at the beginning of this century coal could be loaded only for a period of three months, is now ice free for seven months of the year. The average winter temperature of Russian harbours such as Kola and Archangel has risen steadily too.

The entire Northern Ice Sea is becoming softer. When Fnedjor Nansen ploughed his way through the ice with the Fram towards the end of the last century, the average thickness of the ice was 145 inches. Members of the crew of the Soviet icebreaker Sedow not long ago found that the ice was only 85 inches thick and that floes have become considerably less.

The greatest changes have taken place on the American side. The huge Muir glacier in Alaska has withdrawn 14 miles in the past half century - at the rate of about 409 yards a year.

These changes would be of the greatest importance in a future war. Permanent ice-free harbours and a reasonable passage through the ice sea would, for instance, give the Soviet Union a tremendous advantage.

Change of climate is not only noticeable near the poles. Near the equator conditions are becoming hotter. This may prove disastrous.

For example it has been proved that the Sahara is creeping towards the south as well as towards the north at the rate of a mile a year. If this continues, the African natives will have to move to another continent eventually, for the coastal areas will become over-populated. It was the "drying out" of Central Asia, after all, which moved Asiatic peoples in the past to invade Europe.

And so it appears that the world is leaving the so-called small ice period, which started around 1300. In Holland, the first European country to register weather and climatological conditions at the beginning of the 18th century, it is shown by records that the average winter temperature has been rising continuously.

The reason is that the sun has apparently opened a new "warmth offensive."

It has been known for a long time that the sun has its whims. Otherwise it cannot be explained how under the masses of ice which cover Greenland and Spitzbergen, black coal should be found. Obviously there was a time when jungle forests grew in that zone..........Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1949

_________________________We have about five more years at the outside to do something.Kenneth Watt, ecologist - Earth Day, 197043 years later...we're still here.

Just a week after scientists reported with alarm that 97 percent of Greenland had seen ice melting on the surface in mid-July, new data shows that after a brief refreeze much of the massive ice sheet has again seen melt.

Temperatures again warmed above freezing at key points between July 24-31, according to data provided to NBC News by Konrad Steffen, director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia at Athens, added that satellite imagery showed that the week peaked on Saturday with 74 percent of the giant ice sheet seeing melt.

Typically, about a quarter of the ice sheet has melt on any given day in July, he noted.

"This event was almost as impressive as earlier this month, but didn't have quite as much melt in the north and northwest," Mote told NBC News.

"The big issue is simply the total amount of melt going on this summer, as opposed to any one day," he said. "Overall, we've had much earlier-than-normal and more extensive melting on Greenland this summer."

With about a month and a half remaining in the Arctic melt season, sea ice cover continues to decline at a rapid pace, and is currently on par with where the 2007 record melt season stood at the same time of year. Arctic sea ice extent has been declining at a rate of about 12 percent per decade since the start of satellite measurements in 1979, and a new study suggests that natural climate variability explains some, but not the majority, of this trend.

The study concludes that manmade global warming is the most plausible explanation for recent sea ice decline.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., Arctic sea ice extent tracked at “very low levels” during July, setting daily records early in the month. Sea ice volume measurements, which incorporates measurements of ice extent as well as thickness, is currently running below where it was at this time during 2007, and well below the 1979-2011 average.

This follows an unusually early start to the melt season in most areas of the Arctic, and the region experienced its largest June sea ice loss in the satellite era, when about 1.1 million square miles of ice — equivalent to the combined land area of Alaska, California, Florida, and Texas, melted.

I don't know what you AGW guys and gals would do if Arctic ice was not still melting from soot and lagged solar and ocean current means back to what it was earlier this century several tines in historical records...that and extreme weather in USA...if those two fall over you will have nothing to say anymore!!!